SENTRIES ARE WAITING for me at the gates. I'm escorted immediately to the watchtower overlooking the landing field, another circle completed, where Vosch waits for me-as if he hasn't moved from the spot in the last forty days.

"Zombie is alive," I said. I looked down and saw I was standing on the bloodstain that marked where Razor fell. A few feet away, beside the console, that's where Razor's bullet cut Teacup down. Teacup.

Vosch shrugged. "Unknown."

"Okay, maybe not Zombie, but someone who knows me is still alive." He didn't answer. It's probably Sullivan, I thought. That would be just my luck. "You know I can't get close to Walker without someone he trusts to vouch for me."

He folded his long, powerful arms across his chest and peered down his nose at me, bright birdlike eyes glittering. "You never answered my question," he said. "Am I human?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes."

He smiled. "And do you still believe that means there is no hope?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I am the hope of the world. The fate of humankind rests upon me."

"What a terrible burden that must be," I said.

"You are being facetious."

"They needed people like you. Organizers and managers who knew why they came and what they wanted."

He was nodding. His face glowed. He was pleased with me-and pleased with himself for choosing me. "They had no choice, Marika. Which means, of course, that we had no choice. Under every likely scenario, we were doomed to destroy ourselves and our home. The only solution was radical intervention. Destroy the human village in order to save it."

"And it wasn't enough to kill seven billion of us," I said.

"Of course not. Otherwise, they would have thrown the big rock. No, the best solution is the child in the wheat."

My stomach rolled at the memory. The toddler bursting through the dead grain. The little band of survivors taking him in. The last remnant of trust blown apart in a flash of hellish green light.

On the day I met him, I got the speech. Every recruit did. The last battle of Earth will not happen on any plain or desert or mountaintop . . . I touched my chest. "This is the battlefield."

"Yes. Otherwise the cycle would merely repeat itself."

"And that's why Walker's important."

"The program embedded in him has fundamentally failed. We must understand why, for reasons that should be obvious to you. And there is only one way to accomplish that."

He pressed a button on the console next to him. Behind me, a door opened and a middle-aged woman wearing lieutenant's bars on her collar stepped into the room. She was smiling. Her teeth were perfectly even and very large. Her eyes were gray. Her hair was sandy blond and pulled back into a tight bun. I immediately disliked her. It was a visceral response.

"Lieutenant, escort Private Ringer to the infirmary for her predeployment checkup. I will see you in Briefing Room Bravo at oh four hundred."

He turned away. He was done with me-for now.

In the elevator, the sandy-haired woman asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Fuck off."

Her smile persisted as if I'd answered, Fine, and you? "My name's Lieutenant Pierce. But call me Constance."

The bell dinged. The doors slid open. She slammed her fist into my neck. My vision went black; my knees buckled.

"That's for Claire," she said. "You remember her."

I came up, driving the heel of my hand into her chin. The back of her head hit the wall with a satisfying crack. Then I punched her in the gut with all the force my enhanced muscles could muster. She collapsed at my feet.

"That's for the seven billion. You remember them."

11.

IN THE INFIRMARY I was given a thorough physical. Diagnostics were run on the 12th System to ensure it was fully operational. Then an orderly brought in a tray groaning with food. I tore into it. I hadn't had a decent meal in over a month. When the plate was empty, the orderly came back carrying another. I knocked that off, too.

They brought my old uniform. I stripped. I washed up the best I could in the sink. I could smell the stench of forty unwashed days hovering around me, and for some reason I felt embarrassed. There was no toothbrush, so I rubbed my finger over my teeth. I wondered if the 12th System protected my enamel. I pulled on the clothes, laced the boots tight. I felt better. More like the old Ringer, the blissfully ignorant, nave, unenhanced Ringer who left Zombie that night with the unspoken promise: I will come back. If I can, I will.

The door swung open. Constance. She'd changed out of her lieutenant's uniform and into a pair of mom jeans and a tattered hoodie.

"I feel like we started off on the wrong foot," she said.

"Fuck off."

"We're partners now," she said sweetly. "Buddies. We should get along."

I followed her down three flights of stairs into the underground bunker, a snarl of gray-walled passageways pocked with unmarked doors, under fluorescent lights that bled a constant, sterile glow, reminding me of the hours with Razor while my body fought its losing battle against the 12th System. Playing chaseball and creating secret codes and plotting the phony escape that would lead me back beneath this ghastly light, another circle bound by uncertainty and fear.

Constance was a half step in front of me. Our footfalls echoed in the empty space. I could hear her breathe. It would be so easy to kill you right now, I thought idly, then pushed the thought away. That time would come, I hoped, but it wasn't now.

She pushed open a door identical to the fifty or so other unmarked doors we'd passed, and I followed her into the conference room. A projection screen against one wall. A long table in front of the screen. A small metal box on the center of the table.

Vosch was sitting behind the table. He stood up as we came in. The lights dimmed and the screen lit up with an aerial shot looking straight down at a two-lane road that cut through empty, rolling fields. In the center of the frame, the rectangular rooftop of a house. A solitary, shimmering dot on the left edge of the rectangle-the heat signature of someone on the watch. A cluster of glowing smudges inside the house. I counted them first, then gave them names: Dumbo, Poundcake, Sullivan, Nugget, Walker, and one more makes Zombie.

Hello, Zombie.

"From a reconnaissance flight six weeks ago," Vosch said. "Approximately fifteen miles southeast of Urbana." The video feed went black for an instant, then popped back on: same thin black ribbon of the road, same dark rectangle of the house, but fewer glowing smudges inside it. Two were missing.

"This is from last night."

The camera zoomed out. Woods, fields, more clusters of black rectangles, dark blotches against gray landscape, the world emptied, abandoned, lifeless. The thin black ribbon of road slid out of the shot. Then I saw them: two glowing dots far to the northwest. Someone was on the move.

"Where are they going?" I asked, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.

Vosch shrugged. "Impossible to know for certain, but the most likely destination is here." The image froze. He pointed to a spot at the top of the screen and gave me a knowing look.

I closed my eyes. I saw Zombie wearing that ugly yellow hoodie, leaning against the counter in the lobby of the old hotel, that stupid brochure clutched in his hands, and me saying, I'll scope it out and be back in a couple of days.

"They're going to the caverns," I said. "To look for me."

"Yes, I think so," Vosch agreed. "And that's exactly who they'll find." The lights came up. "You'll be dropped in tonight, well ahead of their arrival. Lieutenant Pierce is tasked with target acquisition. Your only responsibility is getting her within striking distance. At the completion of the mission, Lieutenant Pierce and Walker will be extracted and returned to base."

"Then what?" I asked.

He blinked slowly. He expected me to know. "And then you and your companions are free to go."

"Go where?"

A small smile. "Wherever the wind might take you. But I suggest you keep to open country. Urban areas won't be safe."

He nodded to Constance, who brushed past me on her way to the door. "Take it, cupcake. You'll want it."

I watched her leave. Take it? Take what?

"Marika." Vosch crooked his finger at me. Come here.

I didn't move. "Why are you sending her with me?" Then I answered my own question: "You're not letting us go. Once you have Walker, you're going to kill us."

His eyebrow rose toward his crew cut. "Why would I kill you? The world would be a much less interesting place without you in it." He looked away quickly, biting his lower lip, as if he'd said too much.

He gestured toward the box sitting on the table. "We will not see each other again," he said gruffly. "I thought this was appropriate."

"What?"

"A parting gift."

"I don't want anything from you." Not my first thought. My first thought was Stick it up your ass.

He slid the box toward me. He was smiling.

I lifted the lid. I wasn't sure what to expect. Maybe a travel-sized chess set-a reminder of all the good times we had together. Inside the box, nestled in a foam cushion, was a green capsule encased in clear plastic.

"The world is a clock," he said softly. "And the time is coming when the choice between life and death will not be a difficult one, Marika."

"What is it?"

"The child in the wheat carried a modified version of this inside his throat, except this model is six times as powerful-everything within a five-mile radius is instantaneously vaporized. Place the capsule in your mouth, bite down to break the seal, and all you have to do is breathe."

I shook my head. "I don't want it."

He nodded. His eyes sparkled. He'd expected me to refuse. "In four days, our benefactors will release bombs from the mothership that will destroy every remaining city on Earth. Do you understand, Marika? The human footprint is about to be wiped clean. What we built over ten millennia will be gone in a day. Then the soldiers of the 5th Wave will be unleashed upon the survivors, and the war will begin. The last war, Marika. The endless war. The war that will go on and on until the final bullet is spent, and then it will be fought with sticks and rocks."

My puzzled expression must have tried his patience; his voice went hard. "What is the lesson of the child in the wheat?"

"No outsider can be trusted," I answered, staring at the green capsule in its bed of foam. "Not even a child."

"And what happens when no one can be trusted? What becomes of us when every stranger could be an 'other'?"

"Without trust there's no cooperation. And without cooperation there's no progress. History stops."

"Yes!" He beamed with pride. "I knew you would understand. The answer to the human problem is the death of what makes us human."

His arm came up, his hand toward me, as if he was going to touch me, and then he stopped himself. For the first time since I met him, he seemed troubled by something. If I hadn't known better, I'd have guessed he was afraid.

But that would be ridiculous.

He dropped his hand to his side and turned away.

12.

THE SKIN OF THE C-160 glistened in the light of the setting sun. It was freezing on the airstrip, but the sunlight flirted on my cheeks. Four days until the spring equinox. Four days until the mothership drops her payload. Four days until the end.

Beside me, Constance was running through one last check of her gear while the ground crew ran through one last check of the plane's. I had my sidearm and rifle and knife, the clothes on my back, and the small green pill in my pocket.

I'd accepted his final gift.

I understood why he wanted me to have it. And I knew what the offer meant: He's going to keep his promise. Once Constance snatches Walker, we're free.

What risk did we pose, really? There's nowhere to hide. Months may pass before we face the ultimate choice between death on their terms or death on ours. And when we're cornered or captured, out of all options except those two, I will have his gift. I will have that choice.

I looked down at Constance fussing with her rucksack. The back of her exposed neck glowed golden in the failing light. I imagined taking my knife and plunging it to the hilt into the soft skin. Hate was not the answer; I knew that. She was as much a victim as me, as the seven billion dead, as the child running through the sea of wheat. In fact, she and Walker and the thousands infected with the Silencer program were the saddest, most pitiful victims of all.

At least when I die, I'll do it with my eyes wide-open. I'll die knowing the truth.

She looked up at me. I wasn't sure, but I thought she was waiting for me to tell her to fuck off again.

I didn't. "Do you know him?" I asked. "Evan Walker. You must all know each other, right? You spent ten millennia together up there,"-with a tilt of my head toward the green smudge in the sky. "Did you have any idea he'd go rogue?"

Constance bared her big teeth and didn't answer.

"Okay, that's bullshit," I said. "Everything you think is the truth is bullshit. Who you think you are, your memories, all of it. Before you were born, they embedded a program in your brain that booted up when you hit puberty. Probably a chemical reaction kick-started by the hormones."

She nodded, still all teeth. "I'm sure that's a comforting thought."

"You've been infected with a viral program that literally rewired your brain to 'remember' things that didn't happen. You aren't an alien consciousness here to wipe out humanity and colonize the Earth. You're human. Like me. Like Vosch. Like everyone else."

She said, "I'm not anything like you."

"You probably believe that at some point you'll return to the mothership and let the 5th Wave finish the human genocide, but you won't, because they aren't going to do it. You'll end up fighting the very army you've created until there are no bullets left and history stops. Trust leads to cooperation leads to progress, and there'll be no more progress. Not a new Stone Age, a perpetual Stone Age."